Audiofanzine put the Waldorf Streichfett digital synthesizer to the test. Released earlier this year, the small box is designed to replicate the sound of vintage string machines.
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Joe Paradisio’s huge modular

Joseph Paradiso is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directs the Responsive Environments Group, which explores “how sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception.”

Basically, he works on embedded sensing systems and sensor networks, wearable and body sensor networks, energy harvesting and power management for embedded sensors, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, localization systems, passive and RFID sensor architectures, human-computer interfaces, and interactive media. He works on crazy projects like shoes with sensors that work as synth controllers.

Oh ya, he also serves as co-director of the Things That Think Consortium, a group of Media Lab researchers and industrial partners examining the “extreme future of embedded computation and sensing.”

You can imagine how much free time he has on his hands… for things like this: (click for a much bigger version)

Meet Joe’s massive synth rig. It’s a massive, interconnected, fully patchable system of over a hundred individual synth modules and a variety of fully connected Casio and Moog keyboards.

He’s worked on the rig for almost 20 years, and he’s easily able to wire up a single set of patches that will burble away indefinitely, producing a very aleatoric, bubbling, pulsating, endlessly varying piece of music all by itself.

Joe says:

“The entire synthesizer rig … was crated up and shipped to Linz, Austria, and was featured live at the Ars Electronica 2004 “Timeshift” Festival and Exhibition. Every day, I publicly created a new patch, starting with a rudimentary idea in the morning, and finishing with a full “composition” patch by evening. All patches ran autonomously, without human intervention. I was amazed at the number of people who came up to me asking where the sequencer was and how I entered the program to make the sound. Essentially each synthesizer “program” was formed from the patchcords and control settings – every patch essentially builds out an improvised hardware design that produces and controls the associated sounds”

Cocky Eek’s Tactile Research Lab has created an art-installation-meets-musical-instrument-meets-organic-weirdness. Called the “Get in Touch” exhibit, it invites the public to create sounds by touching the backs of nude people in an effort to help …

In the 17th article of our series, we initiated you to sample-based synthesis and wavetables. Let’s get a deeper look at this particular form of sound synthesis.
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